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I have a problem with my /Volumes folder (the hidden one)
A week ago I restarted my computer (I do that sometimes after a long Firefox session) & my startup volume suddenly wouldn't boot anymore.
It looks like a normal startup (progress bar etc) then goes to a plain blue screen & hangs.

Ran TT & DW, Only very minor problems found.
fsck from single user mode found no problems.

Through other discussions I was asked to boot from a remote volume & look in the invisible folder /Volumes on the problem drive to see what it showed.

It shows "folders" (correctly) of my auto-mount volumes on the day the problem began. But!

It also shows, a single alias which should, & does have the name of that startup volume. But the icon is a firewire drive and inspection via a couple of methods show that it actually points to a 4 month old backup of the volume (on a firewire drive), so it's pointing to the wrong place. Elsewhere I was told this /volumes folder tells the system critical info on startup

I can't redirect that alias ("select new original" is grayed out), and I've been told if I delete this item from the /Volumes folder I risk losing the firewire backup volume as well (which is the only volume I can boot from now).

Does it sound like this "misdirected alias", which should represent the mount point of the boot volume, is the reason for the startup hang?
If so, what to do?
If not where else to look?

Can you start up in Safe Boot mode? Or is the external FW drive the only way? If you can start in Safe Boot mode, you may be able to change the pointer. If that doesn't work, you may be looking at saving what data you can and reinstall.